Ricky Ray entwines the beauty of the world and his love of life with the weight of physical pain he shoulders daily, in this stunning chapbook which urges you to find new meaning in nature’s mysterious workings: “Every time I look up/ into a canopy, I see a mind at work.”

In The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself, Ricky Ray invokes the animalistic yet the utterly, undeniably humane. Visiting the most intimate corners of memory, this is a chapbook that promises linguistic prowess and the healing – however raw – of the ache of living. From Indiana, Florida, and Oklahoma to the inescapable moment of our own death, the moment the sun sinks below the horizon, the moment “the cancer / bloomed like an angry / flower in her liver”, Ray’s language is masterful, transfixed on elevating the mundane and exposing every private moment of our existence. ~ Kayla Jenkins, Writer